MAPPING THE NOTION OF EVERYDAYNESS IN JAPANESE PHILOSOPHY: THE CASE OF SUZUKI DAISETSU AND NISHIDA KITARŌ

Abstract

This paper investigates the semantic field of “everydayness” in the extended constellation of the Kyoto School. We examine the concepts of “ordinary mind,” “ground of the ordinary,” and “everydayness” in the thoughts of Suzuki Daisetsu and Nishida Kitarō in the 1930s and 1940s. We interpret this semantic field historically, focusing on the modernization of Buddhism as a process of philosophical synthesis between two conflicting dimensions of everydayness, which we call the epistemological and the ontological. It will be shown that the modernization of Buddhism, in a certain sense, formulated itself as a kind of modern “religiosity” through dealing with these two disparate aspects of “everydayness.”